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True Likeness

She sits.  And somewhere in the space between
her faded chair, the moth-chewed drape, her dress
tarnished with age, her lumpenness, the scene
is changed, forever, and the paints express
something more like her image of herself,
one that her court approves, and murmurs how
her beauty glows, so true, and how the wealth
and status of their court is lifted now.

Somewhere between the easel and her dais
the magic’s worked.  A jobbing painter’s art
lies in discovering within each face
the dream imagined, and the hopeful heart
that paints itself in crimson, velvet, gold  -
his easel, brushes, palette forge the link  -
with might-have-been, with never-growing-old,
colours unfaded, skin of rose-blush pink.


D. A. Prince

If you have any comments on this poem, D. A. Prince would be pleased to hear them.

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